No truer words were ever spoken (or sung!), but if you have your doubts, read on: The five stories that follow—starting with the romantic tale of how Parade’s own Marilyn vos Savant met the love of her life—are testaments to the ability of love to heal, empower, nourish and more.

Brain Meets Heart

The swoon-worthy romance that nearly didn’t happen: How Parade’s “Ask Marilyn” and artificial heart inventor Robert Jarvik fell in love.

ACT 1:The Meet-Cute

It all began with a man on a plane, reading a glossy airline magazine. He liked the looks of the woman on the cover and what the article inside revealed about her.

That man was Robert Jarvik, who pioneered the first artificial heart. The woman on the cover was Parade’s resident brainiac Marilyn vos Savant, who has one of the highest IQs in the world. The year was 1986.

“The photo was good,” Jarvik says, “but the concept of combining that with her intellect seemed so appealing.” So he called her.

Vos Savant was in St. Louis, visiting her mother and about to depart for a vacation in Hawaii when her assistant phoned and mentioned that Jarvik had called. “I said, ‘Do you know what he wants?’ and my assistant said, ‘I think Dr. Jarvik wants a date.’”

Before she called him back, vos Savant did a little pre-Google-era research; she went to the library in St. Louis and found a copy of Current Biography with Jarvik on the cover.

“I thought, ‘Oh, ugh, and slid it back on the shelf,’” she says. She was leaving when she recalled some of her own less-than-flattering photos. She unearthed a Vanity Fair, with a picture of Jarvik by photographer Annie Leibovitz. He was shirtless, hands clasped together in the center of his chest, eyes wide and bright blue. Vos Savant called him back the next day.

“The conversation was really awkward,” she says. “I was about to say, ‘Well, it’s been nice,’ and hang up,” Jarvik recalls. “Then I thought, ‘I’ll keep going for a few more minutes.’” He describes that moment as “an inflection point” in his life, a mathematical term referring to a point on a curve at which the line of the curvature changes. “If I had said goodbye, it would have changed everything.”

Vos Savant arrived in Honolulu to find a copy of Jarvik’s personal diary, which he’d sent to the hotel for her to read.

“I wrote, ‘If we’re going to meet, I thought you might like to know more about me,’” he says.

While that intensity might scare some, vos Savant regarded it as “very open.” Indeed, she says, “Rob has no guile, no artifice. It was, ‘Here I am.’ I was absolutely fascinated.”

They agreed to meet in Los Angeles, where she was stopping on her way back to New York. He met her at the gate.

“She felt completely familiar,” Jarvik says. “It seemed like I had known her for a long time.” They spent three days going to museums and dinner, and talking, talking, talking.

ACT 2: A Life of Love

Vos Savant and Jarvik were married Aug. 23, 1987, a year to the day after they first met, at New York’s Plaza Hotel. They wore rings the groom made of gold and pyrolitic carbon, a substance used in artificial heart valves. Isaac Asimov walked the bride down the aisle; the best man was Tom Gaidosh, the seventh recipient of the Jarvik 7 artificial heart.

Today, it’s obvious they’ve built a wonderful life. Their “togetherness” is everywhere, including in a radiant mural of the solar system that Jarvik designed and created using gold and palladium leaf and mica powder. At the edges are the words: “Mankind’s Verdant Earth Must Journey (as a) Star Unites Nine Planets”—a device for remembering the planets in order of distance from the sun that vos Savant created for a Parade reader.

Jarvik lay on his back on makeshift scaffolding like Michelangelo for six months to turn her words into art. “It’s so much the two of us,” vos Savant says. She recalls that bits of gold leaf would fall into her husband’s hair as he worked. You can tell when she looks at him that she sees him like that still, a man covered in a fine sheen of gold dust. You can tell, too, that when he looks back he also sees something golden, the bright star in the center of his universe.

Ask newlywed Austin Underwood how he feels about his wife, Jessica, and it’s hard to imagine a sweeter response: “I love her. She’s part of my heart.” The couple, now in their 30s, has known each other since they were toddlers, when their families met at a Down syndrome support group.

“They’ve found ways to climb over the hurdles of their disabilities and they live a comfortable life,” says Austin’s mom, Jan Underwood. And Austin has really nailed his husband role: “Me and Jessica have possibilities. We’re responsible for ourselves. It makes me feel better to have a wife who supports me and I support her,” he says. “She’s a good wife and I treat her like a princess.”

Love at First Bite

Dr. Drew Ramsey

Meet Drew Ramsey, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, with a passion for kale.

How did you and kale first connect? Our affair began in Africa in 1999. I was working in a hospital there. There wasn’t much to eat but sautéed kale.

A whirlwind romance! Oh yes, it’s been a delight—from launching National Kale Day to writing 50 Shades of Kale—it popped into my head: Wouldn’t it be great if people fell for roughage rather than rough?

What do you love most about kale? Let me count the ways! There are only 66 calories in two cups of kale, but more than 250 percent of the RDA of vitamin C, 400 percent of vitamin A, 20 percent of folate and 10 to 20 percent of calcium.What’s the best way to get to know kale? Round the bases slowly. Start with cooked kale, kale chips or kale in a smoothie.

Healing Hearts

Esther FitzRandolph and Danny Pszczolkowski

Heart transplant recipients Esther FitzRandolph and Danny Pszczolkowski, both 68, not only first laid eyes on each other in a hospital, they exchanged vows of commitment there, too. And falling in love has made them healthier: “During their check-ups, we noticed each of them was more positive and active,” says Leway Chen, M.D., heart transplant cardiologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “The two of them together has made them better.”

More than better, really, says Esther: “Our old lives ended with our old hearts,” she says, “We’re happy because we’re grateful.”

Animal Magnetism

Zach Skow with canine companions

Zach Skow was 28 and in need of a liver transplant. To get it, he needed to be sober six months. “I’d never been without alcohol. I really just wanted to kill myself,” Zach says. “The only things stopping me were my dad, who got me into a transplant program—and my dogs.” After two months in the hospital, Zach went home, still very ill. “I couldn’t sleep, so I started hitting the road before sunrise with the dogs.”

“We faced every day together,” Zach says of Marley and Tug, both rescues. “I’d wake up feeling that life was awful and they’d match that hopeless negativism with zeal.” Zach was eventually able to reverse his cirrhosis. “My doctors believe I’m one of the five percent of people who’ve done that. And they have no doubt that my dogs were part of the reason,” he says.

Zach now returns the favor. His nonprofit, Marley’s Mutts Dog Rescue, saves unwanted dogs. “Dogs love you when you don’t know how to love yourself,” he says.